Relevant Paradox
by Alaska-sama
Summary: He awakes from death, to carved valleys and mountains of skeletons. Welcome back to the living, Naruto.


Another story. This one will be quite original, I promise. I understand I haven't always been great about updating my stories, but I promise this one will be better.

This chapter is simply a prologue. Next one will be longer.

**Relevant Paradox:** _Chapter One_

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In a dead and hollow valley among the ruins of a great forest, surrounded by stone, he 'awoke'. When he awoke he didn't have an accurate perception of the time nor place, but he could feel his heart beating, and his eyes saw the ruin before him.

This either meant he had lived, or he had died, but just not realized it yet.

Since this was unlikely, he stared up at the sun and felt an odd nostalgia - disorienting, but acceptable. This feeling was new, though his body recognized it. Because of this his head felt weird, and his heart felt as if it was beating against stone and being hammered by the heat he felt on his skin.

When he would look down his chest towards his heart, he would see it beating outside his chest, arteries and blood soaking the bare , healed skin they protruded from.

He scuffled for a moment with an intense urge to scream, run, and to puke. Sense grappled him before this, and he understood that if he did that he might die. Forwarding himself from his misunderstanding and disorientation, he felt around his mind for a way to get up to search for help. Straining his neck and searching his surrounding, he was left disappointed. Letting out a small growl in his frustration and agony, he saw no other escape.

Cradling the organ with one hand and shifting himself against the stone behind him with another - taking a deep breath of the forest green that he hoped wouldn't be his last - he moved up in a swift, clumsy motion. Thankfully, he lived, with just an intense amount of pain. It felt rather odd feeling pain to something that was supposed to be inside you...but wasn't. It nearly made him puke.

Walking, he felt displaced - like an outsider. As he scaled the stone steps, smoothed by the years, it occurred to him to wonder who he was and from where he was. With this thought, he stopped for a second and furrowed his brow into deep thought before concluding his head hurt too much to think about that.

He could feel blood wet his hand, and at points felt dizzy along with a burning throughout his body that went away;.

For a number of what felt like hours he walked, convinced that amidst the burnt ground and the fallen and rotten trees, there must be someone that could help him; mostly because he couldn't imagine him being the only one of...him, and that he couldn't imagine nor knew of anything else that moved with such destructive capability. While stepping over the trees and working around the large craters and small valleys edged into the ground, he managed some thoughts. Among these were the possibility that no one could help him, paranoia that there was no one else, and the scratchy idea that it was perfectly natural for him to be this way.

When he felt the clouds come over him, and the dull brightness that was begin to fade a fear compelled him to move faster and ignore the burning and the blood.  
It was later that he stood still and considered for a moment that he knew absolutely nothing, and how much this scared him.

And upon the rising of the moon several hours later, when the burning and the oblong feeling in his head beat at him from every angle with his feet taking him some place his mind couldn't conjure he felt below him what remained. The feeling enveloped inside his skull and felt like blood strung in the air all around him. Knowing and fearing, but allowing himself to withhold clarification for a moment.

Below him were skeleton upon skeleton, clothed in the torn garment and ash that fell and lay with them.

Miserably, but without understanding, he knew that here, in this impact upon the soil and rock, were everyone he was searching for. Accompanying this enveloping feeling was a single understanding: For some reason, he was existent; although very well the single being of such traits. And for the few miles he walked, the blood he had left behind him, and the burning among his every limb, he understood that his existence, however it was, was dependent upon this extremely flawed organ he held with his hand; that he was losing his existence faster than he could reach anyone who may help.

Therefore he walked among the dead, knelt where the crushing, enveloped feeling led him before one of the fallen. It was according to this feeling that he would have to tear himself open to save this organ, but the perpetual dangers were not.

Clasping the bony, fleshless hand he knelt before -taking the blade out of it's hand- he cut himself apart.

"You were arrogant, human." The voice reared throughout the cavern, and the water felt beneath his feet as if it were cackling.

"You died. You almost let _me_ die!" As if the compression of anger had become explosive, the walls shook, and very quickly his senses came to him and he wondered many things. Around his bareness he was aware of the decay and the burns in the large space he stood.

Before him were bars that looked almost fleshly, forming by themselves a large prison, suitable to contain a thousand men over its base; most notable in its visual disconnection to the surroundings. Where they were designed and rigid, it seemed biotic and new.

In the center, enormous blood-eyes stared at him with malevolence. It was very interesting to him at first, and he wondered what kind of thing they could belong to. He hadn't heard anything this large while he was in the woods. Quickly and without pardon, a cold, fearful feeling ran up his back as if steel-tipped spiders were crawling across.

Suddenly he had this very intense curiosity that drove through him with a striking awareness. _Where was he?_

Then he ran. If he were to wonder about it, he wouldn't be sure why. But the compressed feeling in his chest, and the splotches of red on the walls and in the cage caused him a feeling that brought about a certain reminiscence, but that he couldn't place. It made him feel like running, running, and never stopping.

He found himself back in that room with the cage, and this his legs hadn't moved at all. That is he couldn't, and his heart beat within his chest as he held his gaze forward and felt for his legs, and wanted so badly to leave.

The eyes stared at him with humour and inquiry. Somewhere between the dripping walls the voice spoke again.

"Human..." He jolted, and the voiced reared back deeper, and gutturally with a chorus of laughter.

"Even after death," the voice struck, "you cannot manage to deceive nor run from this humanity of yours!" It laughed again, making his legs feel numb and his vision throb. Otherworldly, the tempo of the voice seemed, and powerful, making him vividly aware of his own meaningless and unimportance, as if he were staring into an eye of omnipotence.

Slowly, the laughing began to decay, and he heard a soft sound, and a mood fell over, one that made him impatient to move.

"Your name...Do you recall at least that little?" For a moment it was silent, and he couldn't gather his voice to speak.

"I have millennia of time, but I do not desire the patience for your antics. Speak, human!"

"No." It was meek, and spoken with a tight throat. His own voice startled him before he realized he made the sound. For a second it was silent, as The Voice thought.

"What do you remember?"

"N-nothing." Then for another second, the tone of twaddling water was undisturbed and entirely focused.

"Do you desire to?" The question was startling in both it's simplicity and it's directness, and he considered it carefully. Thinking of the broken remains, covered in ash, he danced around the consequences.

"Y...Yes." In the next moment, he considered his own humanity and the consequences of his actions, and he desired to say 'no'. However, instead, he screamed out.

"Yes!"

With an action of both gruesome and splendid endeavour, the walls expressed a, for the first seconds, tasteful heat that in a moment became unpleasant and frightening. With a great tremor, the fleshly walls began to steam and decay before him, the sour taste of it lasting only a moment before it became more industrialized; smelling now of steel and rotten water.

He was weighed with a sudden sensation of falling, and an intense pain in the front of his head; feeling like the two sides of his brain were having a brawl.

Behind the cage a bright light beamed; a very striking orange. Under this light, or behind it rather, there was an organic rumble - almost like a growl.  
The Voice muttered quietly; "Watch out".


End file.
